I suppose I should specify: by 'these things,' I mean musical performances. Some musical performances. Mostly musical performances that involve a flute or a piano in pretty much any capacity.
It's not entirely untrue to say that I have a certain...overexaggerative....streak. I am a queen of hyperbole. And sometimes it's for comedy, but sometimes I actually mean it. I honest-to-goodness mean whatever over-the-top thing I'm saying sometimes--not as often as I once did, but still.
This is where the wistfulness comes in, I suppose.
I took instrument lessons: piano, flute. As I recall, I mostly behaved myself during my piano lessons but I often acted like a little terror in the course of my flute lessons. I have since learned that karma's a very real thing. A few years ago, I agreed to teach flute lessons to the younger sister of a high school friend--and darned if she wasn't as much a terror as I'd been back when! Maybe more!
Anyhow.
Lessons. I took them. And I used to imagine, I used to dream, that one day I'd be good enough I'd be famous. But here's the thing: I never stuck with any one thing long enough to excel enough. My attention span wavered, and while it's true I'm still a perfectly adequate piano player and that I still know which end of a flute is which... none of my big dreams ever came true.
I remember, 15 or so years ago, going into the Capitol Theatre with my parents for the first touring play I ever saw there: The King and I, with Hayley Mills. (For the record, Ms. Mills is nice and all, but I'm pretty sure I would've preferred anyone else be Anna.) Anyhow, I remember looking for the first few minutes into the pit, and thinking: "Someday I'll do that. Someday I'll be good enough to play in the pit."
But I didn't, and I won't, and sometimes that makes me a little bit sad.
Yet mixed in with that sadness is an appreciation of what they're doing: I've taken lessons, I know it's not easy. And I love good performances that much more (and also loathe terrible performances to distraction) because of those lessons. I'm thankful I had parents who let me have them, thankful for growing up in an atmosphere that frequently involved music in the background.
Still sometimes I can't help but wonder if I make--aloud or internally--claims to myself that will never be fulfilled, claims that might result in more bittersweet experiences at some point in the future. It's not even that I think I'd go back and apply myself more. I don't think I'd be a better flute student. I still think that counting out pesky rhythms before playing them on the piano is quite frequently a shame. (So maybe I wasn't the greatest of piano students. I remember an exasperated teacher who lamented not that I had no rhythm, but that I seemed to make the rhythm I preferred...)
But nevertheless, I had dreams. Without any follow-through.
And all of a sudden, my pattern of flunking at something like Nanowrimo begins to make a lot of sense to me: I do this. I'm in a pattern. I've been in a pattern for a long, long time. A pattern where I think big and then go small, when I need to dare to believe that I'm just as overexaggeratedly amazing as I claim to be.
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